[rendaw]

There's a huge gap between hiring specialists and not caring at all, and this sounds more like the latter:

> They would just either tell me to stay in a corner and sleep or just draw pictures, flowers for them

It doesn't take a specialist to recognize something's off (the fundamental assumption is that, barring a diagnosed learning disability, everyone is able to learn to read and write), and you don't need a full time specialist to do a one-off diagnosis. Whether they had the budget for continued full-time support after that (ex: preparing accessible teaching materials) is a separate question.

TFA is light on details, but it's hard to imagine everyone was doing the best with what they had here.

[citadel_melon]

I think we need more competent school psychologists. The field is niche and many who work in the profession don’t fully understand the platonic idea of their job.

Making the profession better paid and more well respected — both more respected for its societal necessity and the job’s rigor exceeding most other psychological/educational professions — would make the field less niche, more competitive, and more attractive to bright students choosing a career. I think school psychologists should be paid as well — if not better — than school principals. Problems like the one this article describes would be a lot less frequent if we make school psychology a more attractive profession.